Assange will speak Saturday, March 8, at SXSW in Austin via satellite video, the press release from the festival reported.

The anti-censorship activist will engage in this extremely rare public interview to discuss the pervasive spread of surveillance, advantages and abuses of the digital age, and the future of democracy.

Assange, an Australian journalist, published diplomatic documents leaked by Pvt. Chelsea Manning in 2010. The Ecuadorian Embassy in London granted Assange diplomatic asylum, and he has lived there since 2012. There is currently a European Arrest Warrant out for him.

Note: Hugh Forrest, SXSW Interactive's director, is a member of Poynter's National Advisory Board.

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Kristen Hare covers local news innovation for the Poynter Institute. Her work for Poynter has earned her a Mirror Award nomination. Hare, a graduate of the University of Missouri's School of Journalism, spent 5 years as the Sunday features writer and an assistant editor at the St. Joseph (Missouri) News-Press, and five years as a staff writer covering race, immigration, the census and aging at the St. Louis Beacon. She also spent two years with the Peace Corps in Guyana, South America. Hare and her family live outside Tampa.